BB10 - All posts tagged BB10

Shares of BlackBerry (BBRY) continued their slide from this morning, as Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, along with Jason North and Billy Kim have a note out today, detailing what they see as further build cuts and reducing their target price by $3, to $15.

Misek and his team write that a month ago, builds were halved, from more than two million a month to one million, but have been decreased by at least another 10%, according to the firm’s checks. They warn that there is significant risk to the Street’s expectations in the coming quarters, spurring them to cut their estimates—their fiscal 2015 revenue forecast of $9.7 billion is well below the consensus $10.8 billion.

Read more highlights from the note below:

Weak Aug Q sell-through. We believe the build plan cut indicates sell-through is tracking well below St’s $3.1B revenue estimate. Our Canada store checks indicate the Q5 launch is off to a slow start and Q10 prices have started to get cut. We trim our handset shipment est from 5.5M to 5.0M (BB10 from 2.5M to 2.0M) and our rev est from $2.6B to $2.3B as high-end handset demand is weak.

Enterprise BB10 refresh should start in Sep but could be pushed out. We think there is pent up enterprise demand for BB10 handsets with the main attraction being an improved web browsing experience. We expect a pick-up in H2 following summer corporate trials of the simplified BES10.1, the BYOD MDM solution, and the Q10/Q5, but we note that the LBO/acquisition headlines will cause enterprises to delay purchases until they have greater clarity on BBRY’s future as a company.

MDM opportunity still attractive but increasingly difficult to get there. The same factors that will likely delay the BB10 enterprise refresh likely will elongate the sales cycle for BBRY’s MDM solution and lead to BBRY ceding share to competitors.

Nonetheless, they maintained a Buy rating on the stock overall, writing that the market will likely continue to look for a suitor for the company, providing some support to shares:

As long as the focus is on BBRY’s strategic alternatives, weaker near-term fundamentals matter less. We think the potential LBO/acquisition to continue to drive the stock in the near term. If missing near-term consensus estimates & the volatility caused by BBRY’s strategic review does not reduce an acquirer’s long-term view of BBRY’s value, we think the stock can move higher from here. We see value in BBRY’S pieces, OS, distribution, MDM solution, BBM, real estate, etc.

Of course, BlackBerry has been much in the news lately, as the company announced last week that it had formed a committee of its board to “explore strategic alternatives,” including a sale or joint venture. On Friday, Bloomberg’s Hugo Millerestimated that CEO Thorsten Heins could make $55.6 million if the company is sold.

On a related note on smartphone trends for BlackBerry, Apple (AAPL) Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT), Raymond James today writes that “quantifiable success remains limited” for the company’s new models, and the “ BB10 was perhaps the last bullet in the chamber.”

Apple (AAPL) is up 1.8% in morning trading today, adding to its gains last week, its best week since October 2011, when founder Steve Jobs passed away.

However, other smartphone makers BlackBerry (BBRY), Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) were all down at recent check. Among other news today, Raymond James analysts Tavis McCourt and Daniel Toomey have a note out this morning examining smartphone trends around the world, with a geographic focus.

McCourt and Toomey write that while they see the global handset market as mature, they are nonetheless raising their smartphone year-over-year growth estimate to 43%, up from a previous estimate of 36%. More than half of all handsets sold across the world are now smartphones, a first in history, and smartphone volumes are logging 47% year-over-year growth.

Much of this growth is in China, where “the transition from feature phones to smartphones in China due to extremely aggressive pricing has occurred more precipitously than we imagined.” However, while this massive growth is a boon for 2013, this may mean some slackening come next year, they warn:

Smartphone growth in emerging markets was up 64% y/y, substantially higher than the overall global y/y growth rate of 47%. Smartphone market growth in China remained strong, up 101% y/y after growing 110% in 1Q13. Interestingly, 72% of handset sales in China were smartphones in 2Q, levels that North America just breached two quarters ago and Western Europe breached last quarter. China is pulling forward massive smartphone demand into 2013, and based on penetration rates, we can probably expect smartphone growth to slow to 10-20% in China in 2014 (but with higher ASPs as China transitions to LTE), as it will be approaching penetration rates seen in the U.S./Western Europe today. Expect India and Latin America to drive smartphone growth post-2013.

As for Apple, they see the Asia-Pacific Region and Western Europe as continued soft spots, as these are the only parts of the world where growth in the company’s smartphones aren’t in the double digits. “We expect the refresh of the low end of the iPhone portfolio (iPhone 5C) will be crucially important at reinvigorating growth in these regions. Samsung Electronics (005930KS), by comparison, which competes across a range of price points, saw its volumes increase 57% y/y, though down from 59% in the prior quarter and 168% in the year-ago period.”

McCourt and Toomey are also skeptical of BlackBerry’s new offerings, and the battle for third place between Nokia and Microsoft’s Windows phone:

With rollout of the Z10, Q10, and midlevel priced Q5, BlackBerry left it all on the table in 2Q13, and quantifiable success remains limited. Volumes were down 23% y/y globally and down 24% y/y in emerging markets. The company announced, just a few days ago, it is pursuing all strategic options, including a sale of the company, and these share trends support the time is now for looking at all the options, as BB10 was perhaps the last bullet in the chamber.

As the dominant supplier of Windows Phone handsets to the marketplace, Nokia is the major beneficiary of the exciting 2Q13 development that Windows Phone has finally surpassed BlackBerry to take over the third place share in the global operating system war. Windows Phone share increased to 3.3%, up from 2.9% q/q, while BlackBerry declined to 2.7% in 2Q13 from 3.0% in the prior quarter. Meanwhile, Nokia’s smartphone volumes were down 40% y/y to 7 million (does not include Asha) vs. 11.7 million in 2Q12. Overall handset volumes were down 27% for Nokia, and outside a decent sequential growth trend for Lumia sales in the middle east/Africa, there remains little evidence of meaningful momentum as of yet in Nokia’s handset turnaround strategy.

Shares of BlackBerry (BBRY) closed down 15 cents, or 1.6%, at $8.97, in the green for most of the session, following an upgrade this morning by BMO Capital Markets‘s Tim Long from Underperform to Market Perform, with an $8 price target, based on their being less downside in the shares after their recent 35% drop.

Without seeing anything to make the stock a buy, nevertheless, Long opines that “there are a few areas that could improve sentiment over the next few quarters,” including the prospect of being acquired, however, unlikely:

The initial BB10 devices did not have access to some key security features, like SMS capture, given limitations with the BES 10 servers. We believe this “Regulated-level” functionality now exists, allowing more enterprises to upgrade to the Z10 or the Q10 [...] Blackberry has expanded its Mobile Device Management solution under BES 10.1, and now offers expanded [Apple (AAPL)] iOS and Android support via Secure Work Space, including secure email. Our checks with industry contacts were positive on the technology [...] The May quarter was worse than it looked because of the failed recognition of revenues from Venezuela … Once the Service Providers are able to pay BBRY in US dollars, we expect a jump in Service revenues [...] Blackberry had $3.1 billion in cash and investments at the end of the May quarter. This equates to $5.86 per share. The company has also used a few billion dollars to purchase IPR or pay down licenses [...] With a lower valuation, and $3.1 billion in cash, a purchase by an outside entity is more plausible. BBRY has a strong enterprise business, a large installed base, a global brand, and an operating system. We still do not expect an acquisition, but we also did not expect Google (GOOG) to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion or HP to buy PALM for $1.2 billion.

Long models $11.29 billion in revenue this fiscal year ending next February, and a net loss of $1.01 per share.

Shares of BlackBerry (BBRY) today closed up 13 cents, or 1.4%, at $9.37, amidst a couple mixed views from the Street.

Jefferies & Co.’s Peter Misek, who has a Buy rating on the shares, and an $18 price target, wrote this morning that his “checks” suggest to him the company has cut its build plans for its existing BB10-based smartphones, the Z10 and the Q10, to one million units per month from a prior two million units per month, as a consequence of “poor May Q sell-through,” referring to BlackBerry’s report June 28th of results that missed Street expectations.

He’s not surprised with the cut, though he is “still surprised that BBRY raised build plans at the end of May despite the worsening sell-through in the back of the month.”

“The cut from 2M+/month to 1M/month aligns with our 2.5M and 3.0M BB10 estimates for FQ2 (Aug) and FQ3 (Nov),” writes Misek, who has a $2.55 billion estimate for revenue for the August quarter, below Street consensus of $3.1 billion, and a $2.55 billion estimate for Q3, below consensus of $3.078 billion.

A corporate refresh could help things, with the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) corporate software and handsets holding the prop sects of boosting results:

Despite share loss and BYOD, we think there is pent up enterprise demand for the BB10 handsets with the improved web browsing experience as the main attraction. With the launch of the simplified BES10.1, the BYOD MDM solution, and the Q10/ Q5 we think enterprises will shift from trials to broader roll-outs in H2. The swing factor is that BBRY’s initial poor showing with BB10 could cause some enterprise customers to fear for the longevity of the BBRY platform and delay or skip refreshing their BBRY handsets.

In a different vein, Stuart Jeffrey of Nomura Equity Research, who has a Hold rating on the stock, and a $10 price target, was on CNBC‘s “Fast Money: Halftime Report” with Scott Wapner fielding questions prompted by a report Friday by The Wall Street Journal‘s Will Connors saying some carriers and retailers in the U.S. have cut the price of the Z10 to as little as $49 with a two-year contract.

Said Jeffrey, the price cuts in the market seem unusual, and he sees a couple of options, both tough, for the company going forward:

The company has said that such things are part of normal lifecyle management of preparing for new devices that will be coming out. We do believe there is this new A10 device coming this fall. However, having price cuts this early before a new product is actually announced seems unusually early to us. It seems hard not to conclude there is excess inventory. The problem for BlackBerry include their not having enough apps, and missing some of the key apps. They’ve really got two choices. They can keep iterating, trying to improve their ecosystem, trying to improve the devices, and try to close the gap with Google’s (GOOG) Android and [Apple's] iPhone. That will be challenging given that they have far more limited resources compared to those two. The other possibility is to promote this secure workspace they are offering to allow their apps to work on Android and iPhone, and go down the route of being more of a services company rather than a hardware company. We’re a little bit cautious about that dynamic, because half their revenue in hardware is coming from places such as the Middle East and Africa. As Android penetrates those markets, we think the hardware business goes away for BlackBerry there, and those are not the kinds of markets that are most likely to take up BlackBerry’s services offers. So they’re really dependent upon Europe and North America. The other question is, we don’t know if they can make their services work properly on the iPhone. And they face competition for mobile device management from the likes of Good Technology and Mobile Iron.

Regarding a buyout, Jeffrey remarked that in his experience, hardware companies tend to get bought out at 0.25 times to 0.5 trailing sales, and right now the stock is trading at about 0.45 times, so he believes there is the possibility for further downside.

If it’s a Monday, which it is, it must be time to speculate about Apple‘s (AAPL) production plans.

Jefferies & Co.’s Peter Misek, who has a Hold rating on Apple shares, and a $405 price target, writes that the company is starting production of the iPhone 5S “later this month,” according to his “checks.” Also, out of a total 50 million to 55 million iPhone units Apple plans to build in December, he writes, “We believe the FQ1 build mix has shifted significantly towards the low-cost iPhone.”

Speaking further of Apple, the Financial Times‘s Tim Bradshawthis morning writes that the company has been hiring numerous employees “to tackle design problems with its ‘iWatch‘ wrist computer,” citing multiple unnamed sources. The article claims Apple has “several dozen” employees dedicated to the project.

Apple shares are up $2.82, or half a percent, at $429.33.

Shares of Applied Micro Circuits (AMCC) are up $1.40, or almost 15%, at $10.86, after Raymond James‘s Hans Mosesmann raised his rating on the shares from Outperform to Strong Buy, and raised his target to $13 from $10.50, wiring that investors don’t fully appreciate the “X-Gene” microprocessor for micro-server computers the company is selling. “With X-Gene offering a truly customized SoC solution that can still operate at 70% of Xeon’s performance and is 6-12 months ahead of 64-bit ARM competitors, we believe that the X-Gene should garner the lion’s share of the ARM server market over the next two to three years.”

“Our view of the emerging power efficient data center landscape sees Xeon as a medieval knight, X-Gene as a ninja, and Cortex A57 as an apprentice.”

The war of words continues between Carl Icahn and Dell (DELL) following a warning on Friday from Dell’s special committee of its board reviewing buyout proposals by Icahn and CEO Michael Dell.

That Friday warning told investors to be mindful of problems with Icahn’s latest proposal, to offer warrants as part of his tender offer to shareholders.

This morning, Icahn shot back in his own open letter to shareholders, “The company will tell you that if Michael Dell/Silver Lake’s offer is turned down, Icahn might still lose the proxy fight at the annual meeting. But this is nonsense because it makes no sense to believe stockholders will vote to elect the current board with their abysmal record and turn down our recap offer of $15 to $18 per share unless the current board makes a superior recap offer.”

A report from The Wall Street Journal‘s Will Connorslate Friday claimed that BlackBerry‘s (BBRY) Z10 smartphone is being discounted by as much as 75% at U.S. carriers and retailers because of slower sales, with Amazon.com (AMZN) and Best Buy (BBY) offering the device for $49 with a contract.

Also speaking of BlackBerry, Jefferies’s Peter Misek reiterates a Buy rating on the stock this morning, and an $18 price target, writing that production of BB10-based handsets have been cut from 2 million units a month to 1 million, according to his checks, but he thinks an enterprise handset refresh could help sales later this year. He emphasizes the stock still has upside, as it is currently trading at “salvage value” of $6 in cash and $2 to $3 in patents.

Canaccord Genuity’s Mike Walkley today cut his estimates for smartphone sales, writing that his calls to wireless stores in the U.S., and his surveys globally, suggest sales of smartphones were “slightly softer” in June after a strong May, and that “We believe the flagship or high-end smartphone innovation curve has slowed, resulting in slower high-tier smartphone growth and an increasing sales mix of mid-tier smartphones.”

Walkley cut his smartphone estimate for this year to 959 million units form a prior 979 million, and cut his 2014 shipment estimate to 1.25 billion units from 1.29 billion units.

Walkley’s “checks” suggest that the mix of sales is shifting to cheaper models of the older flagship phones, and also to lower-cost devices by Chinese manufacturers:

Walkley cut his price target on Apple (AAPL) to $530 from $560, while reiterating a Buy rating, after cutting his fiscal 2014 estimate to 173 million iPhone units from a prior 181 million units, up from 140 million units this year. He cut his 2013 EPS estimate to $39.29 per share in profit from $40.12, and cut his fiscal ’14 view to $44.04 per share from $46.80.

Still, Apple and Samsung Electronics (005930KS) remained dominant in the U.S. in June, he believes:

Samsung and Apple maintained top share of the U.S. smartphone market. In fact, our carrier store surveys indicated the Samsung GS4 was the top-selling smartphone at Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile and #2 selling smartphone at AT&T behind the iPhone 5. Other top selling models included the iPhone 5 at all four tier-1 carriers, the HTC One at AT&T/Sprint/T-Mobile, and the Galaxy S III at Verizon.

Our June wireless store surveys indicated overall soft Lumia sales despite positive reviews for the entry-level Lumia 521 at T-Mobile and declining sales of the high-end Lumia 928 at Verizon. Despite gradual momentum for the Windows Phone ecosystem in the U.S. market, our surveys indicated consumers still mostly enter retail stores with the intent to purchase either an iPhone or an Android smartphone, resulting in Windows smartphone sales trailing these two ecosystems by a wide margin […] Our global analysis indicated tempered sales for higher-end Lumia smartphones as these high-end devices face an ever shortening product cycle. However, our surveys indicated solid sales for the mid-tier Lumia 520 and 620 series smartphones, as the Windows Phone ecosystem gradually gains momentum in lower-tier smartphone market segments. However, we believe sell in growth of lower-priced Lumia models should slow due to stable sales levels following initial channel inventory builds. Due to our Lumia sales mix weighted more towards the lower-end Lumia devices, we believe our June quarter Lumia ASP estimate of 167 euro is below consensus […] our U.S. June surveys indicated declining sales trends for the QWERTY Q10 smartphone post a tepid launch at Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile. While many store reps we spoke with indicated some initial interest and sales for the Q10 into BlackBerry’s installed base of QWERTY handset users during launch, overall consumer interest for the Q10 appears to have weakened the past several weeks. In addition, our U.S. surveys indicated minimal consumer interest in and sales of the Z10 smartphone. Our global surveys indicate ongoing slow sales of BlackBerry smartphones with sharply declining sales of BlackBerry 7 devices. In fact, our global surveys indicated continued rapidly declining demand for legacy BB7 devices post the BB10 launch and BlackBerry’s announcement to support BBM on competing platforms. Now that Android and iOS will support BBM, we anticipate a sharp decline in BB7 consumer sales, particularly in emerging markets, as consumers upgrade older BB7 devices to affordable Android smartphones with their BBM networks intact.

Shares of Apple are down 4 cents at $422.31, shares of BlackBerry are off 37 cents, or 3.9%, at $9.26, and shares of Nokia are off 9 cents, or 2%, at $4.13.

BlackBerry (BBRY) today held its annual shareholder meeting, during which CEO Thorsten Heins emphasized that despite disappointing fiscal Q1 results reported on June 28th, the company is only at the very beginning of a turnaround in its smartphone and enterprise business that will take time.

The stock is up 10 cents, or 1%, to close at $9.65.

Heins fielded an extensive panoply of questions from holders, including some who criticized the roll-out of the new BB10 models, beginning in February, the Q10 and the Z10. One holder asked why the company seemed to have so few trained reps at retail outlets of the carriers.

Heins, emphasizing the amount of time and money spent to train partners in various cities, pointed out that there is a culture among some carriers, including one prominent one in the U.S., to consistently endorse phones from “A fruit company,” presenting a tough obstacle in the U.S. market, which he called the hardest of all markets.

On CNBC‘s “Closing Bell” this afternoon, Seem Mody noted the call featured a focus on the enterprise platform, a intention to reduce costs, to provide a strong balance sheet, and to return to profitability.

But Mody also remarked that Heins seemed not to dismiss calls of selling the company, quoting Heins as saying “Before you go into any strategic option, you have to create value.”

“The value of the company 15 months ago was way less than it is today.”

In my view, Heins’s remarks on the call indicated an intention to press-on with the turnaround, rather than an inclination to sell part or all of the company. Heins did repeatedly stress that BlackBerry is open to partnerships.

Closing Bell hosts Bill Griffeth and Kelly Evans hosted two commenters, Rich Ross, a technical strategist with Auerbach Grayson, and Larry Fishelson, who is CEO of competitive local access carrier Dynalink. Both were skeptical the stock could trade higher than it does and predicted there was little chance of a turnaround.

Remarked Fishelson,

BlackBerry in its current form is dead. It cannot continue. It’s been lapped. They’ve come out with a product that’s only 5% of the entire smartphone biz. With $3.5 billion in assets, and a $5 billion market cap, they basically could go to $7, and become an asset sale. I don’t think that’ll happen; I think Microsoft (MSFT) will come and buy them in a take-under at $5 to $7.

Take the patents off the table. There’s this enterprise user base. If they [Microsoft] take that from BlackBerry and roll it under them, they could roll that all under themselves and also possibly do something on te phone side because they [Microsoft's Windows Phone OS] are the third ecosystem now.

Ross predicted that with a breakdown in the stock from a former trading range, the stock will retrace lows of last fall, around $6, and might go “into the low single-digits.” Ross emphasized the company has 2.9% global market share in smarpthones, calling it “pathetic,” and noted the company is “Under attack” from Samsung Electronics (005930KS) and Apple (AAPL) even at the low end of smartphone pricing.

One of the first notes to emerge from the sell side today was from Anil Doradla of William Blair, who has a Market Perform rating on the stock:

While management highlighted that it did not rule out exploring strategic partnerships, we believe the company is focusing on investing in the business rather than breaking it up […] From our perspective, the commentary points to more near-term challenges. While the company is executing on its transformation—from high-level management to software platforms to supply chain—it is unclear if these changes are good enough for a sustainable turnaround. While we acknowledge that the new management team under Mr. Heins has worked hard in transforming the company, we wonder whether it is too little, too late.

Shares of BlackBerry (BBRY) are up 16 cents, or 1.7%, at $9.71, as the company’s annual shareholder meeting gets underway in Waterloo, Ontario. You can follow along with the meeting via the webcast on the company’s Web site.

The only pieces of news out of the meeting so far this morning was that shareholders re-elected all directors of the company, and that they formally approved the name change from Research in Motion to BlackBerry. CEO Thorsten Heins noted that 19,000 institutions had installed an instance of the BES10 server software for mobile devices, calling the software the “single most opportunity for us” for selling more devices and services.

Shares of chip equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT) are up 52 cents, or 3.4%, at $15.66, after the company yesterday kicked off its analyst day session, in conjunction with the Semicon West trade show in San Francisco, and projected profit of $1.50 to $2.15 per share by 2016, which would be well above the 62 cents the Street expects for the fiscal year ending this October.

Edwin Mok of Needham & Co. issued a skeptical note this morning, reiterating a Hold rating, and writing that things the company trumpeted, such as three-dimensional NAND flash chips, and 20-nanometer chip fabrication, will not in themselves drive the kinds of earnings growth the company has projected.

Shares of Barnes & Noble (BKS) are up 75 cents, or 4.3%, at $18.41, after the company late yesterday announcedCEO William Lynch resigned. Executive chairman of the board Leonard Riggio gave no details about the company’s intention for its “Nook” e-book reader business, but said that “the Company is in the process of reviewing its current strategic plan and will provide an update when appropriate.”

Stifel Nicolaus‘s David Schick this morning writes that he sees very little “wiggle room” for the company in the Nook business, save perhaps for a sale of the business. However, he also opines that “Ultimately, we believe NOOK success will depend on more effective content distribution across all channels, including Windows 8 (still maturing), a yet-unnamed third party tablet (impossible to judge yet), and continued investment in lower tech e-ink readers (hopefully a focus after color-tablets are outsourced).”

Shares of International Business Machines (IBM) are down $3.60, or 1.9%, at $191.38, after Goldman Sachs’s Bill Shope cut his rating on the stock from Buy to Neutral, and cut his price target to $200 from $220, writing that “We believe that pressures on IBM’s growth markets and higher-margin revenue streams may intensify in the near term, weakening some of the key sources of IBM’s earnings and cash flow resiliency in coming quarters.”

In case you missed it, Taiwan’s Want China Timesthis morning reports, in an article sans byline, that Foxconn Technology Group is staffing up for production of Apple‘s (AAPL) “iPhone 6,” citing a recruiting agent in China’s Henan province. The article refers to the iPhone 6 as “scheduled to be rolled out the second half of the year.” It’s not clear if the article is referring to what other have commonly expected to be an “iPhone 5S,” or to another model beyond that.

Apple shares are up $1.32, or 0.3% at $416.37.

Microsoft may unveil the details of a restructuring plan this Thursday, according toAllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, citing multiple unnamed sources. Swisher writes that “The effort, said many insiders who have talked to Ballmer and other involved, is to create something that is being called “functional coherence” at the company, although it is not among Microsoft’s talking points when the restructuring will be made public.”

Before the segment, Griffeth produced his brand new Q10 smartphone, the handset with a QWERTY keyboard, running its BB10 software, that the company released in the U.S. just weeks ago. Griffeth remarked that he loved it, and passed it to Evans, who has an older BlackBerry and was excited. “Who knew it was a babe magnet,” quipped Griffeth.

The segment itself featured John Goldsmith, Deputy head of equities trading for Montrusco Bolton. He tried to make the case for some potential upside, but seems to believe hopes for a sustained recovery for BlackBerry are very slim:

I run a quant fund, and we started a position [in BBRY] in December after the stock had a nice little pop and we’re re-evaluating our position now. We had sold the bulk of our position in September of 2010. Look, this thing is not necessarily going to happen overnight, this isn’t going to be something that happens in the next two weeks. As long as they can prevent the cash burn from eating into cash on their balance sheet, that will prevent them from going under. They have to reposition the company to maximize the value-add products they have, such as the mobile services and the mobile messaging software. If you look at the underlying val, there’s probably $5.80 per share there, so around $8 is the maximum price point, or pain, you can take. I think [at the shareholder meeting] they’ll do their best in putting their best foot forward, and highlighting the value that remains. But probably, this will go go down same path as Boston Scientific (BSX). You know, Boston Sci was above $45, and now it’s up $10, and BlackBerry was above $140 and now it’s up $10. It’s the kind of situation where you have a clear market leader but you have a lot of competition from well-heeled competitors, and then you get margin compression. I’m not saying it’s going to go away tomorrow, but the cards are on the table.

The other guest was Donald Yacktman of Yacktman Asset Management, who remarked:

Ultimately, this business boils down to what you buy and what you pay for it. We made a large investment below $7 and sold all of that and then some at $13 and change and $14 and change. This is a highly unpredictable situation. The 52-week range is $6 and a fraction to $18 and a fraction. Think of it like drilling a wildcat oil well. You want to spread your risk. We have a very small position in this company. It’s a matter of probability. I might walk outside and find an elephant, but I wouldn’t put a high probability on it. I think at this point and time, you watch and see what evolves, because there are a lot of assets in this company.

Asked by Evans why BlackBerry doesn’t restructuring and sell off divisions, or sell the company, Yacktman remarked, “It is difficult for most tech businesses to go private because of the capital needs they have and the way in which they operate.”

“It’s different if you have a consumer product and service versus a capital good like this.”

The Nasdaq Composite Index is up 4.72 points at 3,438 in today’s abbreviated session before the July 4th holiday. Markets close in the U.S. at 1 pm, Eastern time.

Shares of ARM Holdings (ARMH) are up $1.06, or 3%, at $37.47, after UBS’s Gareth Jenkins raised his rating on the shares to Buy from Neutral, while maintaining a $44.25 price target, writing that while sentiment in mobile has lately turned in Intel‘s (INTC) favor, nothing has actually changed in terms of the ARM investment story, with Intel expected to win some share, and “several positives remain including ARM’s ability to penetrate new areas (networking, microcontrollers) and to benefit from low end smart-phone adoption which we see as likely to be driven by the ARM partners rather than Intel.”

Shares of Best Buy (BBY) are up 57 cents, or 2%, at $29.26, after the stock was initiated with a Buy rating, and a $34 price target, at Goldman Sachs by Mathew Fassler, writing that “key senior management roles are driving fresh strategic perspective and improved financial discipline,” and that “a number of elements of the story have improved further, namely more aggressive pricing; a new in- store alliance with MSFT; visibility to improvement in the online effort; and, the sale of the firm’s European business.”

There are mixed messages today about the situation with Dell (DELL) and the battle between CEO Micheal Dell, who wants to take the company private in a $13.65-per-share leveraged buyout, and Carl Icahn, who has made a tender offer for shares at $14, and shareholders are scheduled to participate in a special vote on July 18th.

Yesterday, you’ll recall, CNBC’s David Faber said that Institutional Shareholder Services seemed likely to recommend Icahn’s proposal instead of the LBO. Late last night, The New York TImes‘s DealBook‘s Michael De La Merced wrote that “A special committee of Dell’s directors encouraged him over the weekend to raise the offer price of $13.65 a share,” citing a single unnamed source.

But this morning, there have been headlines floating around that Michael Dell has remarked there is little chance of his bid being increased, according to Briefing.com.

Dell shares today are down 7 cents, or 0.6%, at $13.31.

In case you missed it, Bloomberg’s Dina Bassthis morning reports that Microsoft (MSFT) chief Steve Ballmer might give the company’s director of its Windows operating system, Julie Larson-Green, responsibility over all of the company’s hardware design, and might give control of acquisitions and developer relations to Tony Bates, currently the head of its Skype unit, citing multiple unnamed sources.

Also from Bloomberg this morning, Peter Burrows and Madeline McMahonthis morning write that BlackBerry’s (BBRY) “chances of becoming a viable contender to Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) in the smartphone market are dimming amid lackluster demand for its flagship touch-screen device.”

The article quotes CEO Bob Tinker of software maker MobileIron, which competes with BlackBerry in mobile device management (MDM), who claims the BlackBerry will not be one of the three devices companies care to support.

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.